Over the years, Drupal, as one of the most popular open-source content management systems, it hosted millions of websites on nearly every possible type of hosting platform. From basic shared hosting, advanced VPS and cloud hosting to high –availability dedicated server environment.
However, many personal webmasters and business owners are not yet intimately familiar with Drupal. That most likely causes them to make the wrong selection of Drupal hosting service.
After being asked for suggestions on how to choose a suitable hosting environment for individuals and small business Drupal websites, we concluded several tips that people can fully take into consideration when choosing the best Drupal hosting.
Computing Platform
Typically, Drupal runs on any computing platform that supports both a web server capable of running PHP including Apache, Nginx, and a database such as MySQL or PostgreSQL, etc. Thus, people have to make sure the hosting provider offers these minimum feature visions:
- Apache hosted on Linux or Unix
- The latest or dual version of PHP
- MySQL 5 or higher
Operating System
For personals who are willing to manage operating system for their Drupal website, low-cost shared hosting and VPS hosting might be a great choice. Besides, some reliable web hosts will also offer customer-friendly support when the service has problems.
If they prefer not to deal with this sort of system administration support, then they will intend to choose a managed hosting environment for Drupal. Web hosts are responsible for handling all aspects related to the OS, Apache, MySQL and PHP running and updates.
Setting Configuration
In order to achieve better performance, people have to adjust some PHP settings like safe_mode and memory_limit and others. Since some hosting providers do not support PHP configuration changes or additional libraries, it is quite important to ensure whether the provider allow these setting configurations when making decisions.
System Memory
Generally, Drupal requires 64MB system memory (RAM) at least. If the website has a lot of traffic and modules, people may need more system memory to run their websites effectively. In shared hosting environment, this resource is often limited, and the website performance will be affected when traffic starts to increase.
Database Backup
Making sure that the database is backed up is extremely vital because Drupal stores content and configurations in the database. Compared to automate backup, working with database manually, people need a web interface to access their MySQL database. phpAdmin is a free software tool written in PHP designed to handle the administration of MySQL database.
Updates of Drupal
One effective way to make website run smoothly is to apply Drupal, security patches, and module updates regularly. The updates are launched less or more often, and hosting providers would not handle the update job. To save time and efforts, people can choose the one who allows updates with only few simple clicks.